A look at ‘creepy pasta’ stories and website

Share via e-mail

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who have been charged with stabbing and nearly killing a friend told investigators that they planned the slaying to curry favor with a fictional character they read about on a horror website.

Here’s a look at the character called Slenderman and the website police say the girls had been reading for months:

Online communities have developed to distribute creepypastas and create new ones, said Chris Edmond, a writer who posts under the username MrCreepyPasta. The stories can attract large audiences; Edmond has 385,000 Facebook followers and 500,000 YouTube subscribers.

Edmond said sites dedicated to creepypastas are in no way meant to incite violence. Instead, he said, the goal is to be creative and foster the horror genre.

Who runs the website?

Creepypasta.wikia.com is part of a larger site, wikia.com, which includes 2,700 wikis devoted to fan fiction. A wiki allows groups of users to add, delete, edit and share information.

An administrator posted on creepypasta.wikia.com Tuesday to say that all stories on the site are fiction and not meant to advocate or endorse killing or other violence. The posted described the stabbing in Wisconsin as ‘‘an isolated incident, and does not represent or attribute the Creepypasta community as a whole.’’

‘‘There is a line of between fiction and reality, and it is up to you to realize where the line is,’’ the administrator wrote. ‘‘We are a literature site, not a crazy satanic cult.’’

Attempts to reach site operators by phone and email were unsuccessful.

Should children be reading this?

Creepypasta sites aren’t aimed at children, but they attract thousands of readers younger than 18. Edmond said about one-third of his audience on Facebook and YouTube is between the ages of 13 and 17.

Joanne Cantor, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studied the effect of media on children, said stories like Slenderman can have a greater effect because children can interact with the tale by viewing pictures, watching videos or posting their own versions of stories or comments.

‘‘It could very well be that they were confused about reality’’ in the stabbing case, Cantor said.

She recommended parents talk to their children about how to determine whether things they see on the Internet are real.